Editorial: Right time for a Riverekeeper; we still have something to protect

Posted: December 15, 2013 - 1:11am

Neil Armingeon has seen a lot of pretty water in his time. But, he says, nine months ago he had an epiphany on top of the Vilano Bridge.

He looked south and then north and it was like he was seeing it for the first time.

It’s hard to forget when the Usina Bridge first opened. So many people were awed by the new vista it provided, they’d turn around and go right back over the other way. It became more of a way to see Vilano Beach and the St. Augustine Inlet in a new way, than a means to get there.

The beauty of the Matanzas River that day started in motion a series of events that culminated last week in Armingeon being named the Matanzas Riverkeeper.

His job, not unlike more than 200 people like him under the umbrella organization of the Waterkeeper Alliance, will be to act as a full-time advocate for the pretty stretch of brackish river he’s been trusted to protect.

It begins up around the mouth of the Guana River. Heading south it splits history as it bisects St. Augustine and ends down around Bing’s Landing in Flagler County. It is no coincidence that it ropes in the Guana Tolomato Matanzas Estuarine Reserve or that its neighbors at each end are the research sites on South Ponte Vedra Beach and those at Marineland. “Having two world-class facilities like that is an incredible benefit…,” Armingeon said.

Why do we need a Riverkeeper? If you listen to Armingeon, his job is nothing more than the “evolution of good work people have been doing for 20 years.” But he’s modest.

He was, before the new job, the St. Johns Riverkeeper for nine years. He saw as much bureaucratic red tape political pathos as tannin water in that job. He had some successes and some scarring from the long fight to keep that river flowing clean.

So, again, why a Riverkeeper? It depends upon whom you ask. There are as many reasons as there are livelihoods and interests of those who use it. The Summerhaven River is gone. Crown conchs are threatening oyster beds. The Matanzas inlet is silting in. Conservation lands are being sold off as “surplus” (if there was ever a more ludicrous oxymoron we haven’t heard it). In fact a 12-acre chunk of the coastal hammock in Matanzas State Forest in on the list of possible sales.

But if you really want to know — and see from an achingly first-hand perspective — why a full-time professional needs to watch out for a watershed, cast your eyes south toward the Indian River Lagoon.

Local businessman and conservationist Pat Hamilton told The Record that five years ago the lagoon was the most diverse estuarine system in the world. “And today it’s in total collapse.”

He won’t get a fight from the scientific community on either point.

A perfect storm of disasters pounded the lagoon starting in 2011 when an algal superbloom attacked. Polluted discharges from Lake Okeechobee continue to be released into the Indian River. A downward spiral spun out of control. One problem triggered another.

Today 47,000 acres of seagrasses are lost. Crystal water is brown. 2012 saw record numbers of manatee, pelican and dolphin deaths. The rapid-fire decline has devastated marine life, local economies and a way of life for those who lived with and off of the lagoon for decades.

The future’s as bad. If the Okeechobee runoff could be stopped or diverted at a cost of billions, a researcher at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce estimates that a larger problem looms in the form of 237,000 septic tanks in the three neighboring counties bordering the lagoon.

Would a Riverkeeper have stopped the ulceration of the Indian River Lagoon? Probably not. The creep of calamity was years in the making.

But can a Riverkeeper learn from lessons such as these, anticipate comparable situations, warn of similar outcomes and fight to expose those threats for what they really are?

We think the answer is yes.

Editor’s note: The Riverkeeper program is a nonprofit organization and counts on donations to do its work. A new website is just up at matanzas-riverkeeper.org.